HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (滙豐台灣商銀) on Friday launched a wealth management center in Taipei, and plans to open centers in Taichung and Taoyuan next year, as the bank aims to grow its wealth management business, despite interest rate increases.
The establishment of the new wealth management centers is estimated to cost the bank about NT$100 million (US$3.3 million), HSBC Taiwan said, adding that it would continue investing in employees, service platforms and financial technology.
“We are fully committed to Taiwan, as it is an important market in Asia and we aim to be the leading wealth management bank,” HSBC Holdings PLC wealth and personal banking chief executive Nuno Matos told a news conference in Taipei on Friday.
Photo: CNA
“Taiwan’s high-net-worth customers make up about 10 percent of Taiwan's population,” he said.
The wealth management client base in Asia showed twofold growth year-on-year last year, and the number of HSBC Taiwan’s high-net-worth clients grew 40 percent, while its assets under management rose 22 percent from a year earlier, Matos said.
While many local banks’ wealth management businesses have reported decreasing net fee incomes in light of volatile financial markets amid global central banks’ rate hikes, HSBC Taiwan saw its pre-tax profit from wealth management and personal banking increase by 70 percent annually for the first half of this year, company data showed.
HSBC managed to sustain positive growth, as it has gained a larger market share by providing comprehensive products and customized services, Matos said.
As the interest rate hikes adopted by Taiwan’s central bank are softer than those of its global peers, the monetary tightening has had a milder impact on the markets, he added.
The central bank on Thursday raised its key interest rates by 12.5 basis points, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of rate hikes. Since March, the bank has raised rates by 62.5 basis points, while the US Federal Reserve has boosted rates by 425 basis points.
HSBC Taiwan is expected to show strong growth in business performance through next year, Matos said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to